Hochreutiner's numbers

Slips fom Plantae Bogorienses Exsiccatae (1904) by B.P.G. Hochreutiner [2] appear on numerous sheets in type folders and usually constitute the only collecting information.  They were printed by Hochreutiner to accompany specimens collected from living type material cultivated in Bogor Botanic Garden and distributed to various herbaria at the begining of the 20th century.  The provenance of the original collections is often unclear. The publication includes an introduction and instructions for use in French. These have kindly been translated by Marie-Hélène Weech and are included below:

 

Original text: http://www.archive.org/stream/plantaebogorien00hochgoog#page/n8/mode/1up [3]

Introduction

At the beginning of last year we asked Mr. Hochreutiner, from Geneva, to come to Buitenzorg to finish the Catalogue that was started by Mr. Boerlage. Upon arriving here, Mr. Hochreutiner found changes at the gardens, made since the time when death sharply interrupted the work of his precedessor. So he preferred to take up work on another level, allowing a faster advancement of determinations and making the simultaneous printing of an accession card catalogue possible.

As our wish was to have a catalogue that we could easily consult as soon as possible, we decided to print the Catalogus Bogoriensis Novus.

On this occasion, it seemed both practical and useful to produce an exsiccate of the new and lesser known plants of the garden. It is this new publication that we would like to recommend to the scientific world. It is, in fact, of triple interest.

1. This exsiccate will contain only new species or varieties, originals from botanists who have described new types from specimens in the gardens and rare foreign species, that by chance are found cultivated here and for which the determination is absolutely certain.

2. Seeing the composition of this exsiccate, its examination will be easy for all authors of general monographes. The latter will have the opportunity to use it to revise the new species established by Mr. Hochreutiner, who, lacking in sufficient material for comparison, had frequently to create a new species for a dubious plant. He followed Alph. De Candolle's advice who showed how much easier it isto reduce a new species to the rank of synonym rather than to clear up the confusion created when two different species are under the same name. In particular botanists will have the opportunity here to see the originals of a great number of species from Miquel, de Blume, de Hasskari, etc., rather insufficiently characterised by these former authors and which had remained as enigmas to cience, either because the old samples had been lost or because the types of this era had been collected in too summary a way.

3. This exsiccate, having been numbered with care and filled with printed slips, dated and annotated, will replace the original description for the new types described by M. Hochreutiner. As he had to procede as quickly as possible, it was not fathomable for him to write detailed descriptions, at least for now. He will limit himself to the short diagnoses of the Catalogue.

The publication of Plantae bogorienses exsiccatae close to being a contemporary of that of the Catalogus bogoriensis novus, one will generally find citation of the numbers from the Exsiccata in the Catalogue and in the Exsiccata, the citation of the page in the Catalogue. In this way, all confusion will be avoided.

We will establish 11 collections that will be distributed in such a way that the greatest publicity will be given to them, that is to say that will we chose forthi s, as much as possible, museums situated everywhere, in all regions of the globe. It is important that these plants be at the disposition of the highest number of botanists as soon as possible after the publication of the catalogue.

Later on, will all the other museums, who are in a relationship of exchange with Buitenzorg,will receive little by little, by the normal route, the same species represented in the Plantae bogorienses exsiccatae will be distributed to thefollowing museums:

(9 listed)

An eleventh copy will be split into several families which will be distributed to monographers.

It goes without saying that a complete series will stay at the herbarium of the Institute of Buitenzorg. This exsiccata will appear irregularly in fascicles accompanying the Catalogue fascicles.

Treue

 

Instructions for the use of the Exsiccate

Mr Treue, the director, through his introduction, having given us the honour of presenting this exsiccate to the scientific public, we will not return to what has already been said on this subject.

It is necessary, however to call attention to certain practical details and on the method used.

We notice first that the order of publication is not at all systematic and that the numbers given must be considered as references rather than as grouping together the specimens of a same family. It's true that the latter case occurs often, but it is unexpected and comes from the fact that natural vegetable families are grouped together in the gardens in the same quarters. Now, in the first section at least, we willfollow for the Plantae bogoriens esexsiccatae, the Catalogus bogoriensis novus which features in quarters.

As for nomenclature, we will follow the same rules already indicated in the introduction of the Catalogus, to know, the Lois du Congrèsde Paris, with the amendment of the Congrès de Gênes, fixing 1753 as the limitdate for the priority law. We will adhere to the Berlinrules for the rest. We will however, make an exception for variety names. As for the latter, we will keep the oldest bi-or tri-nomial, in case the oldest name as not been taken up. That extends to the elevation of a variety tospecies rank as well as to the lowering of a species to a variety rank or for the transfer of a variety of a species to another species.

As we have already said regarding the Catalogus novus, one must not believe that these rules were followed with mathematical precision, seeing as that would sometimes require bibliographic searches that are impossible despite the institute's beautiful library.

In certain cases, one will see labels that carry a note at the bottom: det. M. X. That stems from the factt hat other botanists have made determination at the garden and that it would be unfair, either not to take into account their work or to claim the fruits of their labour.

All the specimens have been sublimated under the care of Mr de Monchy, conservator of the herbarium, who we must thank for his efforts, as poisoning the specimens is the sine qua noncondition for their conservation in the tropics.

One will also observe that, sometimes, our samples are accompanied with drawings or photographs destined to substitute our insufficient material. It can happen that we do not have enough flowers or fruits of a species or that the characteristic pieces are so small that it would have seemed desirable to make them obvious. In this case, we have made a drawing which we have had reproduced to many copies by a native illustrator or we have had the whole specimens photographed in the garden.

We now ask all botanists to please critique and correct our work by examining all that we are submitting; we ask them to communicate exactly to us their corrections so that we can insert them in a subsequent edition of the Catalogusnovus.

The introduction of the first section of the Catalogus novus is dated February and does not have a more precise publication date, but inreality the section features at the same time as this pamphlet, so as that bothare contemporaries, as we have already said.

B.P.G. Hochreutiner

1. December 1904